This is in front of the 24-hour Dunkin’ Donuts on 23rd Street, at 7am on Christmas morning. My family is scattered this year so by Christmas I was the only Noe left in New York. I’m not a big Christmas guy anyway. Labor Day, now there’s a holiday.

So anyway yeah, on Christmas I did what I normally do, which is check myself into a motel with a bottle of gin and some hunting magazines.

Wait a sec, no I didn’t! That was just my imagination. Oh, you frisky imagination! Ha! Ha! Ha!

Yesterday I was coming out of rehearsals for Wendy’s latest film project. It was in Brooklyn, where the buildings are low and the sky is big.

Over my car we saw a flock of pigeons flitting back and forth across the sky, massed in a tight formation. The pigeons were dark but had white underbellies, so each time they switched direction it looked like dominoes turning over in the sky. It was quite something.

Then Nobu spied something interesting; a man on a rooftop across the street was looking skyward and waving a huge pole with a makeshift flag on top.

Next to him I saw a large pigeon coop. After watching closely, we realized the man was controlling the pigeons!

I’d read about this. There are these Latino landlords out in Brooklyn who make a hobby of training carrier pigeons, and sometimes they have contests with them. Pretty cool if you ask me.

Tonight we had an assload of people over for dinner. Shady’s girlfriend whipped up a monster pot of Japanese curry. No occasion really, but Mike just got back from shooting a gig in Japan and Tommy Chops came by with his girlfriend, who’s in town from Japan. Also Seiji came by with the missus. It was a very Japanese-centric night, filled with Japanese eccentrics.

Mike’s thinking about picking up a point-and-shoot like my little Canon. I let him and Tommy Chops fuck around with mine. They’re both pro photogs so unlike me, they can take unshaky shots.

“Rain! Come here and let me photograph your big fucking ears.”

Tomorrow I’ve got more rehearsals, and at night Tommy Chops is coming back to me and Shady’s with his girl, Kiyei. She brought some K-1 tapes back from Japan. Cee made two pots of curry so we’re going to have a feast and watch the fights.

I like hanging out with my friends and I like listening to music. I guess not much has changed since high school. Except that now it’s the 21st century and the twin towers are gone and I seem to have a lot of bills. But other than that things are pretty okay.

A typical Canadian elevator.

(I’m allowed to make fun of other places. I’m from New York, which is one of the few cities in the world where a dog can walk down the street and step in human shit.)

You can go to a popular and well-recommended club, or jazz bar, or city, but whether or not you’ll have a good time is, in my eyes a completely random affair.

Maybe the DJ is having an off-night; maybe the bassist is off-key because his wife threw a bowl of soup at him and moved in with her sister. Maybe you never get to meet the people you have things in common with, and so you experience the city as a tourist and an outsider, bereft of the urban lore a like-minded soul could share to enliven your stay.

Thus far all of our recommendations were non-existent or off. The jazz bar that wasn’t there, the countergirl at the café directing us to the underground city, the internet tip citing good nightlife on Crescent Street.

We journeyed eagerly to Crescent, but as soon as we spotted the Hard Rock Café we knew we’d been had.


It’s not that Montreal is a bad city, it’s that Lam, Tony and I are an odd lot. What 90% of the populace enjoys, we can just about guarantee we won’t. We’ve grown up in a city where no matter how odd your tastes are you can still find something that floats your boat, twenty-four hours and seven days. We live in the entertainment shadows of a city of eight million (twenty-one million if you want to count the entire metropolitan area) and that adds up to a lot of weird variety that simply spoils you.

And so on the third day, we knew what we had to do: We had to split up. It’s one thing to be dissatisfied in the company of friends, but quite another to do it alone; when you’re by yourself, you’re forced to make your own good time.


I left the hotel first that morning and headed straight for the Tim Horton’s, which is Canada’s morning-coffee-and-donut chain. I got myself a light-no-sugar and sucked down a maple-glazed donut, a nice Canadian variant on the honey-glazed.

Thusly fortified, I headed back out into the ridiculously bitter cold, camera in tow, to steal the town’s soul with lens and shutter.


After an hour or so wandering Vieux Montreal, my hands were so cold I no longer had sensation in them and felt like I was doing myself permanent damage. It wasn’t even this cold in Beijing.

Desperate to be inside any four-walled structure, I stumbled into a convention center called the Palais Des Congres. It was huge, covering an entire city block, and deserted. More importantly it was heated. I went inside, warmed up, snapped some flicks.


I don’t know what it is about the subways of other towns, but taking them makes me really happy. I love sitting in foreign subway cars and riding through the tunnels and taking surreptitious glances at people in reflective surfaces.

Not to mention the trains are well-heated. In Montreal even the subway stations are heated!


On a hunch I headed back to Rue St. Denis, where the “funky” shops and such were located. I figured although the strip itself was mainstream--eateries with aggressively-art-directed logos and such--there was bound to be something a little more “local” nearby.

Sure enough, by wandering the little side streets between St. Denis and Saint-Laurent I came across a succession of weird little cafes, rather East-Villagesque. Although I no longer spend any time in the East Village back home, this seemed more like a place where I might spend a Sunday if I had to live here.

Hungry for brunch, I entered a tiny blue café populated with people who seemed to resemble my friends in terms of age (late 20s/early 30s) and their decidedly utilitarian, unfabulous clothing. This seemed a lot more comfortable to me.

I asked the counter-guy if it was table service and he said yes, but after I’d haunted a table for ten minutes neither he nor the waitress seemed inclined to take my order and I spotted a no-smoking sign, so I put the Nikes back in service.


After a few more blocks I reached Saint-Laurent, and at random spied a minimalist-looking cafe called Laika with large glass windows. It wasn’t minimalist in the sense of having pristine white walls and spare furniture; it simply looked like the owner hadn’t sunk a lot of money into the décor. A comfortable-looking joint.

It was fairly bustling and the demographic seemed amenable (creatives or grad students, I’m guessing) so I headed inside. The waitress was busy but friendly and I scored a table in the corner covered with a discarded Sunday paper.

The brunch wasn’t bad, I had an egg and some type of salad and some type of crepes. The saucissons were pretty good too but I couldn’t finish them because they greatly resembled turds and I couldn’t get the image out of my head.

After killing the meal I turned to the paper, but found it was in French. I started patting myself looking for my cigarettes, then belatedly realized I was sitting in the no-smoking section. Ah, well.

I saw people smoking at the diner-style counter, and then I noticed a willowy redhead staring at me. Actually she might have just been staring out the window or waiting for a friend to arrive, but I felt like every time I looked up we ended up making eye contact. It might also have been that I was the only Asian in the joint.

I’ve always felt comfortable around the French because of the preponderance of weird Gallic schnozzes. My own nose is what you might call outsized and grotesquely misshapen, a dating liability in appearance-obsessed America and flat-nosed Asia; but the French, and by extension the Canadian French, you see some of the honkers on these guys and you feel pretty alright.

The redhead had guys seated on either side of her, but they all seemed unaffiliated. She was having coffee and scribbling intermittenly into a little red book. Presently the cat to her left stood, paid his check and put his coat on, and I gave his seat thirty seconds to cool off before I crossed the room and sat in it.

She averted her gaze as I approached, and returned to her journal. Up close she had rather elfin features, easy on the eyes, and piercing blue irises that I’m sure her ex-boyfriends remembered distinctly.

Me, I wasn’t looking to pick someone up, just wanted someone to talk to, but I didn’t want to freak her out so when she turned away I ordered a coffee from Smiles the waitress.

After the coffee arrived I inserted a cigarette in my mouth and heard myself turn to the readhead and say “Mind if I smoke?”

Jesus Christ, screamed my subconscious. Ladies and Gentlemen, Mr. Cary Grant.

“No, not at all,” she said, looking at me and smiling. She seemed shy but warm.


I started asking her about Montreal, and we started talking. She wasn’t a born-and-raised Montrealite but was from Quebec. She had a French accent. Her English was perfectly serviceable but it was clear she conducted much of her life in French. This put something of a damper on the conversation--I certainly wasn’t going to try rattling off any snappy one-liners, for instance--but she seemed game to chat.

Turns out she’d been to New York a couple times, I asked her where she’d gone and she cited the usual geographical suspects. Asked her what her favorite restaurant in Montreal was and she said San Tropol (I think).

The conversation ran out of gas inside of ten minutes, partially because the goodwill was there but the chemistry wasn’t, and partially because the coffee (espresso, it turned out) hit me harder than I’d expected and my hands had started to shake. Guess I shouldn’t have lied about being a neurosurgeon.

At this point I had to decide if I was going to hang and work at a conversation, or spend my last day out exploring the city. I looked ruefully at the Quebecoise woman and considered the language barrier, and asked for the check during a silent spot.

We said a friendly goodbye, and it wasn’t until after I walked out of the café that I realized I hadn’t even gotten the woman’s name.

I am an idiot.

Well, at least I’m an idiot with a camera. A few steps down the block I saw a chocolate dog and took a picture.

At night it began to snow like crazy. By this time I’d resorted to whipping around town in the car, but traffic was starting to pile up and traction was beginning to decline. The streets were white and you had to put the wipers on High. I slid back to the hotel to re-up with Tony and Lam.


Turns out all of us, after splitting up, had ended up in conversation with local women. Tony was approached and I think Lam engaged someone in a store. Man, three guys should never travel together.

Also Lam and Tony ended up trying the smoked meat here, which everyone had recommended. Turns out it’s just pastrami. Who knew.


Later that night the three of us decided to go to a strip club. We’re not really strip-club types, but we figured it’s a central attraction of this city (at least among all the guys we’d talked to) and at this point, it damn sure couldn’t hurt. Although I suspected that with our luck, we’d get to the club and find out we were the ones who had to strip.

So we ventured out to Club Super Sexe...and ended up having a terrible time, the details of which will not be printed in this journal. Terribly disappointing, I’m afraid. Either we went on a bad night or the clubs are overhyped.

All I’ll say is that the strippers had...very nice personalities, and a keen interest in financial matters. To top it off there was a large monitor in the background running images of Saddam Hussein having his tonsils checked.

After the disappointment of the first club we went to a second strip joint, but this proved to be even worse than the first and we walked out inside of twenty minutes. The snow was coming down harder than ever--more than a foot had fallen--and we trudged miserably back to the subway station.

We couldn’t believe we’d missed on all cylinders. As I’d said before, we’re not really strip-club types; so the whole point of debasing ourselves was to have a good time, and we’d managed the first part but not the second.

On the way back, a barker standing in front of a third strip club accosted us.

“Come on guys, come in!” he pleaded. “Don’t be shy! We got the beaver for your fever!”

I felt like saying “I don’t have a fever, I’ve got a sore throat. You got anything for that?” or “Do you have any beaver for my runny nose?” but by this time, all I wanted was to be unconscious in the hotel.



Here are some flicks I took on the trip:

The next morning we got up around 5:30am and for the first time, managed to catch the hotel’s Continental breakfast.

It was actually pretty good. They had muffins and fruit and Froot Loops (I love breakfast cereals, but only end up eating them on college gigs) and the much-touted Montreal bagels, which lived up to their rep. Light and fluffy. Tony, though, got some weird English Muffins that resembled, as he pointed out, hamburger bottoms.

As we rolled out of the garage we saw the snow had piled even higher. It was beautiful and fluffy and brilliantly white. It appeared that plows had made attempts to clear the streets overnight, but Mother Nature was clearly ahead of the game.

The highway out of town was well-covered in fresh powder, and driving was slow and treacherous. For two hours we drove through nearly zero visibility, a complete whiteout, and I found myself nodding off. Which is not good, since I was the one at the wheel.

We pulled over in a little rest area and all three of us passed out while the sky did its best to bury my car. I was surprised at how exhausted I was.


Twenty minutes later my eyes opened, slowly. There’s nothing like waking up in an automobile. I started the car, put it in gear, and began chugging slowly through the whiteness. Only 350 miles to go.

A typical Canadian McDonald’s.
(They pay a little more attention
to architecture up here.)

In the morning I pass through the hotel garage and see my car is still covered in salt and mud.

I approach the attendant. “Er, maybe you guys forgot to wash the car yesterday?”

“Yes,” says the attendant.

“Is there any chance you can you wash it today?”

“No.”

“How about tomorrow?”

“No, the guy, he cannot wash the car tomorrow.”

“And the day after?”

“Maybe.”

Wow, it really is like being in France.


Montreal’s touted “Underground City” is just a sprawling and extremely comprehensive shopping mall. The word “underground” makes it sound exciting, as if there will be C.H.U.D.s or hobbits or weapons of mass destruction, but in fact the word simply refers to the fact that it’s subterranean.

Lam, Tony and I descended into Montreal Sous-Terrain to beat the cold, but it simply isn’t much fun down there unless you’ve got someone else’s credit card or a bucket filled with cash and servants to carry your purchases. In twenty minutes we were back on the surface, freezing our asses off.

Remember what I was saying about New York, how it was cold in my apartment and all? Yeah forget that. My apartment is a fucking blast furnace compared to this place. Montreal is filled with penguins lying face-down in gutters, dead from overexposure. The plastic Christmas dioramas here all feature a frozen Santa, blue from hypothermia, clutching at his chest while Rudolph lies next to him with X’s for eyes.

I've been walking around and my face gets so frozen I can't talk right. You exhale and it feels as if your soul is leaving your body. I kept wishing Han Solo would come by and cut a taun-taun open and stuff me inside.

I see these people walking around with no hats and I, I just don't know how they do it.

These people wouldn’t last three minutes in Hell, I tell myself. You know, to make myself feel better.


Last night we were back at the hotel, gearing up to crash when I took the elevator down to the lobby in search of a sewing kit.

As the elevator doors opened I heard pumping bass coming from the back of the lobby. It was nearly 2am. Curious, I followed the sound down a hallway and discovered that it opened into a large bar, packed with people.

The bar was done up in hewn stone and dark woods and resembled a dungeon, or what a dungeon might look like in a Disneyland ride. Most of the people appeared to be ultra-conservative and in their 40s. I’d never seen a singles scene of 40somethings so it was kind of fascinating, anthropologically speaking.

I found a stairway at the back of the bar, and followed it downstairs. At the bottom was a tunnel. I walked along it for twenty feet and it opened up to an area filled with chairs lining a smallish, low-ceilinged dance floor, also in line with the dungeon theme. More older people were boogeying around and colliding while a DJ spun some spastic Latin dance music.

Of all the reasons you could possibly have to feel horrified in a dungeon, I felt this was the worst.

The guys all looked like they sold computers and most had cell phones clipped to their belts. I started to feel weird and bad so I went back upstairs.

At the other end of the bar I found another room with another dance floor. The DJ in here was blasting “Taking Care Of Business” while more people were jumping up and down in a pitch fever and singing along. I haven’t felt this alienated in a long time.

Well, hotel bar, what do you expect.

I sat down at the bar and had a slow cigarette and thought about mortality and interesting stories I might be able to tell my kids. I couldn’t think of anything.


Coin culture. Like in Japan, they’ve got dollar coins and even two-dollar coins in Canada, so with a handful of change you can actually buy something that isn’t gum. The two-dollar coins have a crunchy silver exterior and a creamy gold center.

In America we’ve got dollar coins but you only get them as change from the Metrocard machines and every hates using them because, well, I can’t remember why but we hate them. Americans hate things that are different, which is why my friends and I, all ethnic minorities, had hellish slants to our childhoods.


I’m impressed at how the locals here switch back and forth between French and English completely effortlessly. If I struggle I can remember bits and pieces from high school, nearly none of it substantial enough to communicate. Let’s see:

Interdit and defense de mean forbidden or that’s a no-no.

Combien ca coute means How much will that set me back.

A baloo is a bear.

A younker is a young man.

I think the check (in a restaurant) is called l’addition.

Sortie means to fly a bombing run against a helpless agrarian country on very thin intelligence.

Dangereuse means dangerous, obviously, and les liaisons dangereuses means period piece where John Malkovich tries to nail Uma Thurman.

Read signs, yes, shit-shoot, no.


I pick my brain up and shake it, hoping complete sentences of whatever French I once knew would fall out, but all I could come up with was Pouvez-vous me dire, ou se trouve la bibliotheque?

Fat chance I’d be looking for a library. American education sucks, and my years of instruction in French were no different. (I’m uncertain as to what role, if any, my being a horrible student played in all this.)

They train you to memorize stupid sentences like My aunt’s favorite sport is tennis but my uncle prefers swimming or The dog is outside the house, under the tree and behind the fence.

They never teach you useful stuff like You’re the snottiest waiter I ever had; how ‘bout a slap? or Don’t you look at me like that, I fucking voted for Gore or Your honor, I killed the clerk in self-defense and was merely helping to refill the cash drawer when the gendarmes happened upon me.

Hey, can anyone tell me this? Why is it that American colleges are some of the most sought-after in the world, and yet the lower education sucks so badly? How is it possible that we have such consistently shitty high schools and such lauded universities? And how do they get ketchup into those little sealed packages?


We went up and down Rue Saint-Laurent and Rue St. Denis, which reminded us of Queen Street in Toronto. Some of the shops were quirky and interesting, but I found myself wishing for the umpteenth time that we could find something to do here that wasn’t commercial. I guess if you go to a city where you don’t know anybody then that’s the trap you fall into.


The night before we’d tried to go to a jazz bar, hailed by my guidebook as “one of the city’s finest.” We showed up around midnight to find it had turned into some type of cheesy and completely jazz-free café populated by older people.

Always check the copyright date of a guidebook before you buy it.


The second night we found a jazz bar that was actually still there. It was called the Upstairs Jazz Bar but was located downstairs, and for some reason the sign was hung upside down. I’m guessing the owner came up with this idea in a drunken stupor but actually followed through with it after he’d sobered up. I don’t know, it seems like the kind of thing that would sound funny if you were drunk.

There were two trumpet players on stage at the same time, kind of rare, accompanied by a good pianist, a decent drummer and a middling bassist. The trumpet guy on the left was pretty damn good, even if he wasn’t exactly blowing the doors off the place. All in all it was pleasant, if unthrilling.

Sigh.

I awakened with loose sheets around 10:30am. Tony, ever the adventurer, had gotten up earlier, already scoped out the surrounding area and was ready to go.

Lam and I donned our vulgar American clothes (matching day-glo T-shirts reading “U Can’t Touch This,” large foam “#1” fingers) and the three of us ventured outside the hotel in search of breakfast. We’d overslept the hotel’s complimentary Continental rise-and-shine, which was probably nothing more than a couple bran muffins anyway.

“Is there a car wash around here?” I asked the hotel’s garage attendant. My intent was to leave the car in the garage for the rest of our stay here, but it was covered in salt and mud from the drive up, which can cause rust.

“We can wash the car for you,” he offered. How civil! Imagine having your car washed by people and not machines.


Vieux Montreal (Old Montreal, for those of you who opted for Spanish in high school) is, as the name would indicate, old. The streets are cobblestone and the buildings, all hewn from stone, seem to date to the era when it took fifteen minutes to shoot somebody because you had to stuff that long stick-thingy down your musket and pour the gunpowder in. I could almost picture Daniel Day-Lewis running down the street being directed by either Martin Scorsese (bad) or Michael Mann (good).


Vieux Montreal was old in a charming way, of course. The drag about New York is the old buildings are patently filthy. If you’ve leaned against the Woolworth Building then you’re not sitting on my couch. But here it seemed someone scrubbed the edifices on a regular basis. In addition, nearly all of the restaurants/cafes had large glass windows and warm, inviting interiors. We selected one at random with high ceilings and an overwhelming selection of pastries.


At the café counter I hesitated and observed the other customers, unsure if French would be the default language. It was. The counter-guy greeted everyone with “Bonjour.” I tried cobbling some French together in my head (“Je voudrais...er...Pouvez-vous me donner...goddammit...”) but then the counter-guy took one look at me and said “Hello” which isn’t French last time I checked. I asked for coffee and he gave me coffee.

One guy sitting in the café was reading a paper and seemed to be a local. Apparently unemployed, or somehow capable of holding down a job while haunting a café at 11:30 in the morning. Canada’s socialist so you never know.

The others appeared to be tourists, mostly older. I guessed Vieux Montreal was probably a part of town where few people actually lived, perhaps only the super-rich, as in New York’s SoHo, but tourists would flock to. I hoped to uncover something more “local” and populated with our contemporaries during the course of the trip but didn’t have the faintest idea where to start.


After coffee we went outside and walked through the neighborhood. The narrow cobblestone streets, the randomness of the layout and the architecture all reminded me of Paris, but something about the scene was clearly un-Parisian. Took me a moment to realize what it was: The abundance of large American cars. Absent were the quirky-looking and sensibly-sized Renaults and dented Citroens, supplanted instead by overweight Dodge Intrepids and bulky Buick something-or-others.

For some reason the parking meters, rather than lining the curb, were placed all the way across the sidewalk, against the buildings. A meter maid could rappelle down the building faces and check the coinboxes without having to touch the sidewalk.


“I checked out Chinatown this morning,” said Tony, referring to the neighborhood immediately north of us.

“Anything worth seeing?” I asked.

“It’s about three blocks long,” he said. Well, it could wait. I had gotten an internet recommendation to head to McGill University to pick up a free Montreal guidebook. The one I had purchased back in the ‘States was, I belatedly discovered, two years out-of-date.


We located a nearby subway station (“Place Des Armes”). It actually had doors! The ones in New York are just open stairways leading down, with the exception of the larger stations like Grand Central.

The doors are pretty cool, they are double-width and mounted on a center hinge, so when you enter the station by pushing on one half, people can exit the station through the other half and there is no interruption of flow. Clever design, unlike, say, New York’s Grand Central, where you yank open a one-way door and must wait for the tide of people to spill out before you can enter.

Inside the station we waited and watched people going through the turnstiles, to see how to do it. From behind I couldn’t see if they were using tokens, paper tickets like in Japan or Metrocards like in New York.

Tony went up to the guy in the booth and procured a green strip of tickets, which looked rather like the ones you get at a church raffle or carnival. He tore one off and slipped it into a glass box at the token booth, then the clerk hit a button and Tony went through the turnstile. Lam and I did likewise. The clerk also mentioned we could get a free bus transfer and described a procedure that I forgot almost immediately afterwards.


The subway platform was friggin’ spotless. No rats, no garbage and I even saw a girl sitting on the floor reading a paper. (I still wouldn’t let her sit on my couch though.)

In New York I always wait for the subway with my back to a column so none of the crazies will push me off the platform (a few people die every year this way). But here the ceiling was vaulted and had no columns holding it up. Some people waited along the wall and some along the edge of the platform. Crazies, like rats, seemed absent.

Presently a train rolled in, though it looked more like a bus to me--it had large rubber tires. The doors opened before the train had stopped moving completely, allowing people to hop out at a slow roll, like in Paris. I dig that.

We entered the narrow subway car, which was uncrowded but cramped in terms of design; the center seats, when occupied, preclude any movement from one end of the car to the other. As the train starts moving you can feel that the rubber tires have shocks--the ride is very smooth and there are no sudden jarring jolts. It occurred to me it would probably be really easy to drink a cup of hot coffee on this moving train, which is a learned skill in New York’s epilectic subway cars.


Yes, I have a tendency to interpret the experience of other cities by comparing it to the systems in New York. It’s a shitty habit but can’t be helped.


“You guys know anything about McGill?” I asked, as we walked through the campus. It seemed typically collegiate, with stately buildings and large swaths of grass (albeit frozen). All of us were freezing and bundled up but people were walking around with no hats. We even saw a girl wearing shorts.

“It’s a really good school,” said Lam. “Supposed to be the Harvard of Canada.” I had a tough time with this because every time I heard “McGill” it reminded me of ‘80s skateboard sensation Mike McGill, who had invented the McTwist. I think I had a poster of him when I was little. I pictured the diplomas here being emblazoned with a little skater guy doing a 540.


We located the student center with little difficulty, but the student guides were nowhere to be found. “We’re all oot,” said the guy behind the counter. “We ran oot of them in September. Should have more next semester.”

We went back ootside into the cold.

Leaving New York

Today’s soundtrack: Your sister Lucille said she wanna go
Today at 11:02pm: gassing up in parts unknown



On Thursday Manhattan was cold and work dried up early, around 2pm. I took the six home and packed for Montreal, then sat around until evening listening to Django Reinhardt and putting important documents into an envelope labeled “In the event of my death.” The fact that I anticipate my demise every time I leave the city can’t be a good thing, but what are you gonna do.


Tony and Lam showed up at my place around 7pm and we hopped into the whip. We picked up some Vietnamese sandwiches and I wolfed most of mine down somewhere in the Holland Tunnel, pausing only to shift.


On Route 87 we had our usual scatological discussions (would you eat this person’s asshole out for a million dollars, etc.) and then digressed into a lengthy conversation about politics. I never used to have an interest in politics but George W. Bush has scared me into taking an interest.

At the end of the day I’m glad to be American, but I hate when my ideas of what it means to be American and the President’s begin to diverge. I dislike having to feel reluctantly, apprehensively American.


The border cop in the booth was a Chinese-Canadian woman. I was hoping that since we were all Asian we’d just be able to give her the secret handshake or a chinky wink and enter the country, but her supervisor must have been watching because she asked us all for IDs. Sellout.


At the end of the day--and this time I mean the real end of the day, or 2:30am, to be precise--I was an apprehensive American on Canadian soil. After roughly seven hours of eighty miles an hour I at last rolled my Golf across the cobblestone streets of Vieux Montreal, and this was the first thing we saw:

An hour later we were asleep in hotel beds.


Every time I sleep in a hotel, the first thing I do is circumnavigate the bed, pulling the edge of the sheets out. They always tuck them in so tight I wonder how the hotel maid pulls her hand back out. I bet more than one has gotten her hand stuck in the three nanometers of space left between the sheet and the mattress and has had to call for help.

Remember The Sword In The Stone? If medieval England had hotels I bet the true test of The Man Who Would Be King would have been, Who can pull this maid’s hand out from the mattress.


VASSAL
He did it! The boy named Arthur pulled the maiden’s hand from the mattress!

ARTHUR
She’s a maid, not a maiden.

VASSAL
How did you free her hand, milord? Many men have tried and failed!

ARTHUR
I simply used a petroleum-based lubricating agent I invented. In honor of you, I’m going to call it Vassaline.


Anyways I don’t like going to sleep feeling like I’m strapped into something, it’s bad for your dreams.

Today’s soundtrack:
I've been accused of everything,
from Timbuktu to old Berlin.
Today at 6:02pm: I accidentally punched my partner in the face in Hapkido during a drill.



I am so out of here. Tomorrow night I’m going to get in my car and point the thing north and chomp on a cigarette and stomp on the gas. I will play Django Reinhardt as I leave the city limits. Then the big city will get smaller behind me. Next will come eight hours of driving, and I’ll cross an international border and soon another big city will loom large in front of me.

I probably won’t really smoke in the car though, ‘cause I’m going up with Lam and Tony, whose habits include breathing regular oxygen. Even when they get stressed out.

You ever smoke when it’s cold outside and you can see your breath? It’s difficult to tell when you’re done exhaling. Anyways Lam says it will be very cold in Canada.


LAM
I checked the weather, it’s going to be very cold up there.

ME
How cold?

LAM
One degree.

ME
Farenheit, or Celsius?

LAM
Um...Kelvin.


I realize it’s stupid to go to Canada in winter. Kind of like going to Hell in summer. If you die in July and wind up in Hell I bet you regret it a hell of a lot more than if you went in January.


IMP
Welcome to Hell! Prepare to burn in hellfire for all eternity, human. Rest assured you will be miserable.

ME
This place doesn’t seem so bad to me.

IMP
What?

ME
I can appreciate it for the heat value.

IMP
Well you’re not supposed to appreciate it for the heat value. You’re supposed to atone for your sins and--

ME
You don’t understand, my apartment is freezing. You could store fish in the bedroom. Me, I wanted to come to Hell, I applied for early decision. I had a clean record so I robbed a couple liquor stores just to get on the roster.

IMP
Did you shoot any clerks?

ME
No, I just waved the gun around.

IMP
Did you at least use the money to buy drugs or stolen goods?

ME
No, I gave it to charity.

IMP
[sighing] Then you can’t stay here, jackass--you’re not a real sinner. Get back on the elevator.

ME
No, wait, I lied! I used the money to buy drugs! Lots and lots of drugs!

IMP
Is that right. What kind?

ME
The bad kind! The bad, bad kind! Uh...Fastballs! And Quaaludes!

IMP
[putting pitchfork away in disgust] They’re called Speedballs, jackass, and they don’t make Quaaludes anymore. Get upstairs, you make me sick.


None of us are really clear on what we’re going to do once we actually get to Montreal. I like traveling though because your initial daily mission is to find food and a roof to put over your head, and after that you can do whatever the hell you want. No boss, no timesheets, no deadlines, no voicemail. No eating food on trays, no meetings, no teleconferences.


Did I tell you I stopped wearing a tie to work? Well, I did. I mean I work at McDonald’s but still.

Seriously though I did stop wearing a tie to work, because I realized The Corporation doesn’t consider me a real employee. I’m just a perma-lance on-site consultant. I would discuss this further but I am sensitive to the fact that I would be wasting your time.


So I hear they speak French in much of Montreal, and they’re such purists about the language they won’t adopt English words. I heard they don’t even have a word for the Internet. They probably call it “Le Wondrous Interconnected Computer System ‘de’ Something” in French. Which makes no damn difference to me because I am not your typical vulgar American. I mean I am vulgar but it has less to do with my citizenship and more to do with having been a maladjusted child.


I am thus far rather disappointed with the Canon Powershot SD-10 because, who’da thunk, the camera is so goddamn small you can’t help but take a shaky picture. The thing just has no weight to it so it’s very difficult to keep your hand steady. But on the viewfinder everything looks crisper than a bucket of Original Recipe.

So it’s not until you get home and upload that you realize you’ve shot 30 pictures’ worth of CRAP. I got photos look like I shot ‘em in an earthquake after drinking two pots of Maxwell House. This has caused me no end of frustration.

My other gripe is that you have to deactivate the flash each and every time you turn the goddamn camera on. Sometimes I forget, like today--I tried to take a surreptitious picture on the crowded subway and FFFFLASH! the motherfucker went off, alerting everyone in the car.

I felt pretty stupid after that so I stared at the window until my ears stopped burning. I was waiting for people to come up to me and say things like “I’m not angry...just disappointed in you” or “It just takes one bad apple to ruin it for the rest of us” or “Go to your room and think about what you’ve done.”

Anyways after Union Square a good deal of people got off the train and I felt like my embarrassment left with them, so I took another shot. It didn’t come out how I wanted but here it is:

What a gyp. I drop three-something bills on a new camera and now I gotta tie rocks to the damn thing to take a steady picture.


MONTREALITE #1
There is an American! Let us throw rocks at him.

MONTREALITE #2
Throw!

MONTREALITE #1
Throw!

MONTREALITE #2
Look...he is tying the rocks to his camera.

MONTREALITE #1
Why would anyone do such a thing?

MONTREALITE #2
Because, you fool, he is an American.

MONTREALITE #1
They are so vulgar.

MONTREALITE #2
Yes but this one, he seems like his vulgarity is not due to citizenship, but rather a function of having had a maladjusted childhood.

MONTREALITE #1
How would you know?

MONTREALITE #2
I’ve been reading about psychology on Le Wondrous Interconnected Computer System de Wide World.

MONTREALITE #1
Let us throw cheese at him!

MONTREALITE #2
Throw!

MONTREALITE #1
Throw!

GRIM REAPER
But officer, I just left it here for a minute. I was coming right back.

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Double-parked in a “No Standing” zone, sorry, buddy, that’s a double whammy.

GRIM REAPER
But I was coming right back!

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Already started writing the ticket, buddy. Sorry. You shoulda parked at the meters.

GRIM REAPER
I didn’t have any quarters for the meter!

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Really. What did you spend ‘em on, laundry? That tattered black cloak looks like it hasn’t been washed in ages.

GRIM REAPER
That’s because it hasn’t. [booming voice] I am older than time immortal.

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Yeah, yeah. Tell it to the judge.

GRIM REAPER
Hey--do you know who I am?

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Yeah. You’re the guy in a tattered black cloak who’s getting a ninety-dollar fine for double-parking in a “No Standing” zone. And you’re about to become the guy in a tattered black cloak who’s gonna get his car towed for giving me lip.

GRIM REAPER
But--

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Here’s your ticket, now get this thing outta here before I change my mind and put this hunk of junk in the impound lot.

GRIM REAPER
We’ll meet again, my friend. We’ll meet again.

TRAFFIC OFFICER
Hey, your buddy just ran off.

GRIM REAPER
Fuck!

Today’s soundtrack: I want some steam on my clothes

Today at 7:02pm: Dinner at a diner in Queens.



I made an impulse purchase a smart person wouldn’t have made.

So I’ve got this perfectly serviceable digital camera, an older Sony. My only gripe with it is I can’t take it just anywhere, it’s a little too bulky to fit into a pocket and thus requires a bag.

I hate carrying a bag. I see them as obstacles to me swiftly escaping a terrorist event or random urban calamity. If some asshole decides to light the Six up and we have to bolt through the doors at the end of the car, I’ll have to stop and shed the bag if I’m to knock the slow and infirm out of the way with any kind of conviction.

Back to the camera. Because of the Sony’s size it often remains on my desk while I take simple jaunts to the diner or the corner store--and that’s always, of course, when you end up seeing a U.F.O. or the Loch Ness Monster or a monkey on a bicycle or some other shit you should’ve shot. And you get cameremorse.

So on impulse (and credit) I purchased a Canon Powershot SD-10 Digital Elph, which is one of those cameras that’s so small that if I had to, I could probably fit it in my anus. Well, maybe not, but I bet you could fit it in your anus.


I figured with a camera this small, I really could take it anywhere and be able to shoot fantastic shots at a moment’s notice! I could amaze and delight my friends! Four megapixels, why that’s a megapixel more than the Sony! An affordable 256MB media card? Well my friend you can fit hundreds of hi-res shots on that bastard!

So today I’m walking down 50th Street with a cuppa coffee and I hear this whirring overhead. I look up and there, floating between two skyscrapers, perfectly framed, is a hovering chopper. The buildings are stretching for it like rectilinear glass fingers.

I fumble for the camera, careful not to scald myself with hot coffee (once burned, lesson learned). Whenever I burn myself with coffee this series of thoughts runs through my head:

1) At some point in human history, someone invented or discovered this delicious beverage.
2) This beverage is best enjoyed piping hot.
3) Because you are clumsy, not only are you not enjoying the beverage, you have used it to injure yourself.

I keep digressing. I don’t know what it is with me today, I have the attention span of a Golden Retriever.

So I carefully place the coffee on a nearby horizontal surface, but by the time I break out the “Powershot” and aim it skyward and jazz the power and pull the trigger, the chopper’s gone and I’ve got four megapixels of nothing.

I don’t have any good pictures of helicopters, so my unburned flesh is a small consolation prize.


At the ripe old age of 32 I’ve found that nothing is ever as good (or for that matter, as bad) as you think it is going to be. I read this article in the Times about this psychologist who studies happiness. He said humans are terrible predicters of what will make them happy. If I get that car, if I buy that product, if I date that girl, they think, and then they get it and the feeling a) is less than they’d imagined and b) fades faster than Luke Perry’s career.

I read about another study on happiness in Newsweek and they concluded that people, regardless of calamity or windfall, tend to maintain the same level of happiness throughout their lives, punctuated only briefly by spikes and valleys. In other words a miserable person who wins the lottery will quickly regain their misery, and a happy person who suffers the death of a loved one will again find their cheer.

Interesting, no?

The third and final survey I’ll bring up that had an influence on me was one where they asked people “on their deathbed” what they most regretted in life. People regretted some things, sleeping with their friends’ wives and whatnot, but overwhelmingly everyone regretted the things they hadn’t tried (presumably, sleeping with their other friends’ wives).

That’s when I started taking some detours in life, which I’ve never regretted, though wandering turns into its own addiction. All roads lead to Roam.

Which reminds me, goddammit, I still haven’t made it to Cuba. Must get back on that. Now recalibrating focus: Three, two, one, mark.


I wonder how they only managed to survey people on their deathbed. The survey probably had some margin of error, in other words I bet they got some answers from people who weren’t quite dying yet.


SURVEY RESPONDENT
Hi, I’m calling in about your survey.

SURVEY TAKER
Are you on your deathbed?

SURVEY RESPONDENT
Umm, not quite, but I am dying--

SURVEY TAKER
Well, we’re only looking for Desperate Truth. We only seek answers from those on their deathbed. People who know they’re on the way out any day now. Those are the only people we’ll accept answers from.

SURVEY RESPONDENT
Well, the doctor says I’ve only got a few months to--

SURVEY TAKER
Listen to me--a few months is not good enough. Call us when you put on the last pair of pajamas you’ll ever wear. Ring us up when you see the Grim Reaper parallel parking in front of your building.

SURVEY RESPONDENT
I would think the Grim Reaper double-parks.

SURVEY TAKER
What?

SURVEY RESPONDENT
I bet he doesn’t even use the hazards. Or if he does, I bet he never turns them off.

SURVEY TAKER
Well, you won’t know for another few months, now will you? So do us all a favor and call us then.

SURVEY RESPONDENT
Hey, do you think the Grim Reaper ever leaves the sickle in the car? Like “Well, I’m going to be back in a minute anyway, no sense in hauling it all the way upstairs...” I bet he doesn’t. You know, in case he gets towed.

SURVEY TAKER
I’m hanging up now.

SURVEY RESPONDENT
No, wait! My EKG is starting to flatline, I can see it on the monitor!

SURVEY TAKER
Quick, look out the window! Is he parking? Is he parking?


Me, I might bitch and kvetch some, but I think most of the time I’m pretty happy. It sure might not be what you’d register as happiness, but I feel as good as good goes, and that ain’t bad.

I still hate carrying a bag though. If I was the Grim Reaper I’d leave the sickle in the car.

Today’s soundtrack: staring at the sky, staring at the sand
Today at 8:02pm: shivering



It works like this: Let’s say you live off one of the local stops. And as you’re coming down the subway steps in the morning, a flood of people is coming up the steps. This means you’ve just missed the train. We’ll call that train “Train A.”

But as you get to the bottom of the steps, another train pulls in. Train B. Very rare, even during rush hour, to get two trains back-to-back like this.

So you get on Train B, and you of course get a seat because Train A swept most of the commuters off the platform. (This is called Second Train Ample Seating Syndrome.)

And as you settle into your seat you have it in your head that Train A is just a short distance ahead of you.

So you realize that if you transfer to the Express at 14th Street, there’s a good chance it will overtake and pass Train A, and then if you hop off the Express at 42nd Street you can catch Train A as it pulls in.

So you do it, and it works. You’ve successfully jumped one train ahead.

You do this because there’s something satisfying about calculating and executing a faster way to get there. And you congratulate yourself for shaving five minutes off your morning commute.

But then you climb the steps at 51st Street and remember that you hate your fucking job, and all you’ve really accomplished is getting yourself there faster.

Nice going, Einstein.


Heater still broken in my apartment. Very very very cold over here. If you want to make ice, all you gotta do is leave some water in a glass.

I bought a space heater. It provides outstanding warmth in a fucking two-foot radius. This thing would be great if I tethered it to my ankle and dragged it around like a dialysis machine. I can pretend I am Osama bin Laden, outwitting Special Forces with my advanced rock technologies.

Right now I’m practically straddling the thing like a motorcycle. The worst part about this is I am a college graduate and oh, if you could see how I live. No heat, small meals, bland clothing. The freelance life is hand-to-mouth and I’m waiting for some checks to come in. I’m in between checks. I’m in between a rock and a cold place.


I just did some random Math for no reason. Today I am roughly 32.333 years old, which means I have awakened for 11,801 mornings. Give or take twenty or thirty for all-nighters, travel time and jetlag.

I wish I started keeping track earlier, I would’ve done something nice on my 10,000th morning. (Like smash my alarm clock into little bits with my shoe.) I suppose I could go back and calculate when that was but right now I don’t want to know. The only thing I want to know is when the goddamn heat is coming back on.


What’s up with this second sniper in Ohio? The news is keeping it awfully quiet. If I wanna read about it I have to dig for it in the papers, but it oughta be on the front page.

At lunch I always dig through the lurid crime briefs in the Times (underreported) and the Daily News (overreported). I don’t know why but I feel the need to remind myself that terrible things still happen daily. Kind of keeps things in perspective for me. It also makes me less shocked when I hear about things like Hey, they found a human head in a dumpster. I don’t like shocks. I want to be able to say Human head in a dumpster, Jesus, is it July already.


I’m laid up with a nasty cold. If you ride the subway in New York, forget about it, there’s no way you’re not getting sick in the wintertime. There’s always some nasty person coughing and hacking and touching all the surfaces in the train. Misery loves company, and germy people on the train loving touching the handpoles. I try to hold my breath after they sneeze but it’s usually too late; I heard somewhere that sneeze germs travel eighty feet per second and take three hours to settle. If I could have psychic powers I wouldn't ask for anything crazy like long-range clairvoyance, but I'd love to have a two-second warning before someone sneezes.

In Japan people wear dust masks when they get sick. They wear them to prevent other people from catching their germs. The mask creates a sort of personal maxilofacial germ containment area. That was one of the things I really liked about living in Japan.


As you can see, I have nothing meaningful to say. I’m just typing for the sake of typing and I know, there’s something deranged about that.

Today’s soundtrack:
I can’t find my bluebird!
I’d listen to my bluebird sing but I can’t find my blue bird

Today at 8:02pm: Trying in vain to find online episodes of Arrested Development. Have you seen this show? It’s fucking funny.



Four weeks ago I was walking somewhere on Lexington when a dead leaf fell from above and hit the sidewalk with an audible clack. Manhattan’s not exactly rife with trees but I somehow managed to witness the death of a leaf. Suicide, more than likely. I was hoping to see a bunch of other leafs gather around and point while a leaf ambulance pulled up but it didn’t happen.


Three weeks ago I was at another of Wendy’s auditions, doing my best to follow her directions.

She rewrote the part for an older guy, so I asked her why she was still auditioning me. She said she wasn’t happy with the Asian actors she’d auditioned up ‘til now.

“I’ve been having a tough time locking down the female lead, too,” she confided, gesturing towards the table. It was covered in headshots of Asian women, all very professionally-photographed.

“I really wanted this girl, but I couldn’t get her,” said Wendy, holding up a photo that looked strangely familiar to me. “Her agent called and told me she couldn’t do it.”

I took the headshot and studied it, trying to remember where I’d seen it before. This exact face, this exact pose. I’m not a guy who’s regularly exposed to actor’s headshots so it was a bit of a mystery to me.

Then I remembered: Livejournal! I’d read this girl’s blog and her headshot was the same as her user pic. Small world. Fiona, if you’re reading this, Fate almost gave us the same GPS coordinates for an afternoon.

Then Wendy showed me another headshot. “I wanted this girl too, but I accidentally fucking deleted her e-mail and now I can’t reach her.” It was a girl named Lili--from Montreal. “The girl e-mailed me and said she’d be willing to drive to New York for the role.”

“That’s funny, ‘cause I’m going to Montreal in December,” I said.

“Well if you see her, be sure to bring her back.”


Two weeks ago I had to bring my car in for servicing. I woke up and an ungodly, Fisherman hour and got the whip up to the dealership by 7:40am. The Customer Service guy came out to greet me--grudgingly. Customer Service Representative Dennis is clearly one of those people who hates his job.

After confirming my appointment on his grim little clipboard, he asked for a number where he could reach me. I debated having the following conversation:


ME
You know, I don’t normally do this.

CUST. SERV. GUY
Do what?

ME
Give my number out like this. All these dealerships are such meatmarkets. I just came here to have a good time.

CUST. SERV. GUY
What?

ME
Listen, just because you buy me a drink doesn’t mean I’m obligated to do anything.

CUST. SERV. GUY
But...we provide complimentary coffee to all of our customers.

ME
Yap, yap, yap. Listen...you better call me...I mean it. You better call me.


An hour later he did indeed call me, to tell me one of his mechanics broke my fucking window. I’ve had my windows broken before but by crackheads and thieves, not a fifty-dollar-an-hour grease monkey.

“What happened?” I asked.

“Well, as part of a Volkswagen recall we’re obligated to replace your power window mechanisms. One of our mechanics was replacing it and accidentally broke the passenger-side window. We won’t have a replacement until tomorrow. You can pick the car up then.” Then he hung up.

No apology, what a jerk. But whenever I meet unpleasant people who work in customer service I think well, at least they’re not working at the U.N. or trying to convince other countries to stop hating us. We’ve got people specifically groomed for the job doing it and it’s already fucked-up.


Last week I took the 7-train out to Flushing. It’s nice to take an above-ground train, I live off the six so I don’t get elevated views much. The six is clean but you have to stay underground, the seven is filthy but you get something of a view. You can’t have it both ways.


The other day someone asked me what I see myself doing in the future. I see myself working as a Hovercraft Hyperdrive Repair Technician. Or maybe a Stargate Mechanic. I don’t know, something with my hands.

Today’s soundtrack: why is the last mile, the hardest mile
Today at 3:02pm: mouseclicking my way to Corporate Hell



I know I ought to be doing something different, and now even my ID badge knows it. When I run it over the laser-sensor-thingy at work in the mornings, the electronic gate balks before letting me in. I watched other people go in and they beep right through no problem. But mine lags.

I appreciate the message my ID badge is trying to send me, yet I can’t help but wish it were a tad more specific. I’d like it if tomorrow I tried to beep through the gate, but it denies me entrance and my ID badge starts talking to me.


ID BADGE
No access, buddy. You can’t go in. This Corporation is not aligned with your larger life goals.

ME
Well what am I supposed to do?

ID BADGE
Go home and write a book.

ME
I know, I know. But about what?

ID BADGE
I dunno, write about a talking ID badge.

ME
No one wants to read a book about a talking ID badge.

ID BADGE
Then write it in your fucking blog.

ME
What purpose would that serve?

ID BADGE
(Sigh) You’re such an idiot. Look, just go home and try to write something, anything. If a week goes by and you don’t get anywhere, just e-mail me and I’ll send you some plotlines and characters.

ME
Cool, thanks. What’s your e-mail address?

ID BADGE
IDbadge@rains-subconscious.com. But don’t e-mail me, I’ll e-mail you.

SECURITY GUARD
Sir, sir. If you’re not going to go through the gate would you please step aside and let other people through.


I’m going to Montreal in a week-and-a-half, I hope that will clear up my writing sinuses. These days I’m almost afraid to type.

Well, a little bit at a time then. Something is better than nothing, no?